How to Dress Formal

How to Dress Formal monkeysee.com See how the experts do it. David: This is David from Be Better Guys.com The Guys Guide to Getting a Life. We’re talking about what to wear for an event for formal wear. Now formal wear tends to flip out a lot of guys. You get an invitation in the mail for a wedding, for cotillion, for a bar mitzvah and it says black tie and a lot of guys go, “I don’t own a tux, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how I’m going to dress” so we’re going to talk about the basics of what you need. First of all was formal wear, there’s two types, there’s black tie and then there’s white tie. White tie most guys are probably not going to go to that’s a very, very special event invitation only. Black tie is more common and there’s 2 types of tuxedos you can wear either a black one or a midnight blue either one would be acceptable. So let me bring in Brian and we’ll go through the specifics of how black tie works. Brian: Hi David. David: How’s it going Brian? Brian: Good thank you. David: You look good buddy. Brian: I do what I can with what I have. David: Alright, so on our tuxedo here, Brian has a black what’s called a peak lapel tuxedo and it is a single button. There’s a lot of different options with a tuxedo, first talking about the color again, this one is a peak lapel you see it has got a point here. You can have a notch lapel which is similar to mine on my jacket or what’s called a shawl which is a style that goes back to the 30’s and 40’s. The other thing is the number of buttons can vary. Typically most tuxedos are one button as Brian’s is here. Mine I’m actually wearing a three button but mine is not a tuxedo, mine is actually part of a suit and we’ll talk about that a little bit. The other thing t remember you will see sometimes the academy awards or the Grammy’s guys showing up with tuxedos with five button, six buttons don’t do that. You want a shirt to go with it. Two types of shirts, you can do a flat front shirt like Brian has got here, or you could do the Wedding Singer heavily ruffled pleated shirt. Right now styles are going the flat front shirt is a little bit more popular. It’s a little bit more common. Also two types of collars you can use. Brian’s got what’s called a lay down collar and I have the same on my shirt and there’s also more of a flip up wing collar which is nice. The tips of the collar fit behind the bowtie and they look good some people think they look like major D so depends on the look you’re going for. You got to have the bow tie, that’s part of what completes the look. Did you tie that tie Brian? You tied that yourself my man. Learn to tie a bow tie if you’re going to wear a tux. You can certainly do a clip on but if you’re not going to wear a clip on regular tie you shouldn’t wear a clip on bow tie. We have instructions on Be Better Guys.com on how to tie a bow tie. Additionally, to complete your look, you want to have studs for your shirt not standard buttons but studs, a cummerbund which usually covers your waist area because you don’t wear a belt with tuxedo pants and then the shoes that go with it as well. A couple of things to keep in mind about tuxedo pants, they don’t do cuffs. Again, they don’t have a belt so some people wear suspenders to hold them up and that’s fine, we didn’t have them today but you can certainly wear those and the other thing is they have a nice set of line don’t the side which looks beautiful and helps distinguish them as tuxedo pants from regular black pants. So if you don’t have a tuxedo and you’re not going to get one what do you do? Like me you can ear a black suit to a formal event that is acceptable to do. But if you’re going to do it you want to make sure that you’re going as understated and as formal as possible so black suit, white shirt, dark tie in this case it’s a black tie with some white stripes so very, very subtle keep your shoes polished to the nines and you’ll look good, that’s all for formal wear, next we’re going to talk about formal wear for a funeral.